For Women’s History Month, here’s a title, Never Caught by Erica Armstrong Dunbar, about a runaway enslaved woman, owned by George Washington’s family. It’s the year 1796. The first president of the United States and his wife, slave owners from Virginia, are living in the country’s capital, Philadelphia Pennsylvania. Ona Judge, owned by the president and his wife, first went with the family in 1789 to the capital, New York, and then on to Philadelphia, when the capital was moved in 1790. There she was exposed to a city with a community of free blacks and organizations that helped enslaved people. She experienced more freedoms in the North than on the Washington plantation in Virginia.
In the spring of 1796, Ona Judge received devastating news – she was to return to the southern state of Virginia to be gifted to Martha Washington’s recently married granddaughter. Judge decided to make a bold move, in May 1796, while the family was having dinner, she walked out of the Washington home in Philadelphia and never returned. The author became aware of Judge while researching another project. Decades after her escape, Judge gave two interviews describing her story that appeared in abolitionist newspapers in the 1840’s.
